Ning followed behind Jezeere until they both got to a place that was much quieter without that any teachers or students.
Ning looked around at the emptiness and asked, "Why are there so few people right now. I assumed there would be thousands of students here."
"Ah, it's an entrance season, so the students have a week-long holiday until we get the new students acclimated to the academy," Jezeere said.
He then brought out 3 talismans and handed them over to Ning. "How did you know these things?" he asked.
"Aren't these the talismans with my answers?" he asked and looked through them. "What did you mean by how I knew these things? I learned them."
"Is that so?" Jezeere said while making a scrutinizing face. "Then how come I, a 9th-grade Alchemist not know half of what you've written? In fact, I didn't even know there were answers to the first question. It was supposed to be something that the examinees answered with 'I don't know," he said.
"Huh? You don't know? But these are some pretty simple knowledge t—"
Ning stopped as he finally realized something. 'So the Intermediate alchemy information I got from the system is better than a 9th-grade alchemists' knowledge?' he thought.
"Simple knowledge? Of course, it's not a piece of simple knowledge. If not for your other 2 answers, I was ready to say your answer was that of a rambling buffoon. However, once I saw how good your other answers were, better than the best I had imagined if I may add, I finally decided to test your first answer just a little bit."
"And I must say, every single one of the techniques worked. I didn't know that such a thing even existed. Haha, I was very pleasantly surprised and gave you the pass just then and there," he said.
"Please tell me where you learned these techniques from?" Jezeere asked.
"Oh, I found it in a cave," Ning answered without hesitation. "I was once going through a jungle a few dozen years ago, and came across an underground cave on accident in the middle of it."
"When I searched through the place, I found a few books regarding almost everything out there, but all of them were destroyed by the passage of time."
"The alchemy books barely remained and I managed to read them for a while before they too got so bad that they were destroyed as well."
"Until today, I thought those knowledge were very simple, but now that I listen to you, I must have struck fortune at that time," Ning sounded very surprised and honest as he lied through his teeth.
Jezeere felt like he was being lied to, but couldn't think of any other explanation for Ning to have learned so much at such a young age.
"Mind I ask what forest it was in?" Jezeere asked.
Ning's face got sad as he said, "it was the Shedding Forest of the East. My father and I used to go there to look for different insects and plants all the time."
"After my father passed away due to Qi deviation over a century ago, I went there one last time to cherish our memories. That was when I found those things." His eyes were nearly filled with tears.
"Ah, my apologies," Jezeere quickly apologized. He no longer doubted Ning's answer after seeing his emotions.
"It's fine. Let us change topics," he said. He then saw Jezeere's other two bronze badges in addition to his golden star badge and asked, "What are those for? Those have different carvings from the golden ones."
"Oh, this? The one with the mortar and pestle is my Physician's badge, and the one with the apple is my Beast Feeder's badge. I have some understanding in both of those subjects and can give a good enough lecture on those two subjects to garner that amount of students," Jezeere said.
"Oh, does that mean you didn't have many students during those two classes?" Ning asked.
"No! Quite the opposite actually," Jezeere said with a smile. "Since the number of teachers that actually teach these things are low, students flock to my classes when I teach these two subjects once in a while. I even had over 2000 students in one of those classes," Jezeere said.
"Unfortunately," he continued, "Since the academy bases the badges off of average student over the month, I ended up not meeting the mark of the 200 students for the Silver Badge."
"I see," Ning said. "Does that mean that I can teach other subjects too?"
"Um… you need at least a Silver star badge in your main teaching materials before you can move to other lessons," Jezeere said.
"So, you need a Silver badge in Alchemy, which is the exam you took, before you can move on to whatever else you like."
Ning deliberated on that information for a few seconds. "I see, that's not too bad either."
"Let's go back. You must be getting bored here."
Jezeere took him back to the staff room to get his storage bag full of the different things he would need in this academy. and showed more of the area around the academy to Ning.
Ning was shocked at how truly big the academy was. The exam hall he had been to was already big, but that seemed to just be a spare room that belonged to no one.
The actual classes were massive enough to be large than most lecture halls he had seen himself. The actual lecture halls were also very, very large.
'This place can hold at least 10,000 people and there are 5 of these?' Ning's shock didn't lower even as he went through the different places in the academy.
"And the other 4 wings have the same thing too?" he asked.
"Of course," Jezeere replied. "We don't discriminate between any of the 5 professions, so the academy is built to perfectly encapsulate that."
"Anyway, have fun around here. The classes will begin in 3 days, and after that, this place will be your home for the foreseeable future.. Good Luck."